FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of arrangement of a conventional display control unit (plant monitoring control system) that enables the monitoring and control operation of a plant using a touch panel.
The conventional display control unit illustrated in FIG. 4 is the one disclosed in the Japanese Patent Publication (unexamined) No. 139020/1994 (Patent Document 1), the display control unit including a control unit 47 acting to control various control equipments (plant equipments) for use in power plants, industrial or chemical plants or the like, as well as comprising a display 41 displaying the state of the plant equipments, a touch panel detector 42 to be added to an operation control screen, being a display screen of the display 41, and a display computer 46 acting to control the display 41 based on the output from the touch panel detector 42 and the output from the control unit 47, and in this display control unit there is provided a touch panel detector control section 43 acting to possess a database outputting a control signal that shows which position of the touch panel detector 42 corresponds to which positional information of, e.g., various control equipments being displayed on the display 41 so as to output a control signal to the control unit 47 based on the touch position of the touch panel.
In the conventional display control unit illustrated in FIG. 4, a plant operator (operator), while looking at an operation control screen displayed on the display 41 by the display computer 46, touches a predetermined position of the touch panel detector 42 to make an operation.
The touch panel detector control section 43 inputs “touch position information (actually, coordinate position data) that the plant operator touches” from the touch panel detector 42 and “operation screen information that is currently displayed on the display 41”.
Subsequently, based on such information, the control signal corresponding to such information is searched with the use of stored database to be outputted to the control unit 47. The control unit 47, based on this control signal, controls a variety of control equipments of the plant.
In this manner, due to that the output processing (instruction of operation control) of a control signal with respect to a control unit conventionally conducted by a display computer is conducted at the touch panel detector control unit 43, the load on the display computer can be reduced.
Furthermore, the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Publication (unexamined) No. 139020/1996 discloses also an arrangement in which a plurality of systems each being made up of the above-mentioned display 41, touch panel detector 42, touch panel detector control unit 43 and display computer 46 are provided, and each touch panel detector control unit 43 and each display computer 46 of each system make an output to the control unit 47 via a control signal information network 48, as well as each display computer 46 of each system makes an output to the control unit 47 via a communication network 48.
Owing to such arrangement, this display control unit is applicable to a large-scale system requiring a plurality of displays.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Publication (unexamined) No. 139020/1996 (FIG. 1, paragraph 0008)